Faure Piano Quartet at the Indiana History Center, Wednesday

This Wednesday, January 27 the Indiana History Center will host the Faure Piano Quartet in Indianapolis downtown. Tickets to this Indianapolis music event are $30.00; the concert starts at 7:30 pm. As part of the Ensemble Music International Chamber Series, the Faure Piano Quartet comes to the Circle City straight from Germany, where their journey of international success first took flight. Arrive early for a pre-concert lecture at 6:45 pm from Butler University professor Dr. Lisa Brooks.

The Faure Piano Quartet was founded in 1995. Soon after their formation, the group won top prizes and awards including the Deustche Schallplattenpreis, Echo -Prize, Preis des Deutschen Musikwettbewerbes and the Parkhouse Award in Great Britain. Currently they are the leading European ensemble. In 20o6, they secured a recording contract with the Deusche Grammophone.

In honor of the Mozart Anniversary, they released two Mozart piano quartets. They followed this up two years later with an album of Brahms including op.25 and op.60. The group has travel the world sharing their music. They have graced the stages of performance venues including Wigmore Hall in London, Philharmonie in Berlin, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. They have also played Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Paris and Milan. In fact they have toured extensively throughout West and East Europe, Asia, and North and South America.

Wednesday evening the Faure Piano Quartet will present Quartettsatz in A Minor by Gustav Mahler, Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor (K. 478) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Opus 25 by Johannes Brahms. Mahler wrote his first piano quartet when he was only sixteen. After it won him two prestigious awards, he tore it up. Immediately following this he attempted a second piano quartet in A minor, which the Faure Piano Quartet will present. Those written in his youth the piece is far from juvenile, expressing deep seriousness, melancholy and angst (well maybe its a bit teenage, but beautiful nonetheless).

Wolfang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G Minor can be isolated as the “single piece that led to the establishment of the piano quartet as a popular, viable genre of chamber music.” — A. Robert Johnson. The interplay between strings and piano, described in the music as K. 478, set a standard to which many composers would attempt to rise. Johannes Brahms’ Opus 25 premiered in Hamburg, Germany in the Fall of 1861. Though initially it received mixed critical reviews, it is now forever remembered as Vienna’s first taste of Brahms’ unparalleled talent. After this, he was hailed as “Beethoven’s heir.”